Below you will find an example of a guided design activity based off of an international engineering experience that occurred during an Engineers Without Borders trip to Guatemala.  This activity is appropriate for any group of individuals looking to better understand the challenges faced during intercultural design projects.

Intercultural Construction: Building Biosand Filters in Guatemala

Application Scenario

The process of constructing biosand filters with local construction workers in a rural Guatemalan community.

What Students Should Learn

After this activity students will have a deeper understanding of how a seemingly technical engineering project actually encompasses a wide spectrum of knowledge, skills, and attitudes.  Students will also realize the importance of communication, giving community ownership of the project, and acquiring trust from individual community members while working on a technical project on-site.

Learning Objectives

Technical Development

• Analysis: Student will be able to apply technical knowledge to develop designs that meet project goals.
• Synthesis: Student will be able to determine which technical design is appropriate for the project context and relay their reasoning.
• Evaluation: Student will be able to adapt and modify technical knowledge in relation to the project context.

Communication

• Knowledge: Student will be able to identify potential communication barriers that may be encountered.
• Application: Student will be able to develop various methods of working through communication barriers.
• Analysis: Student will be able to determine how to appropriately react to various communication challenges.

Community-Based Development

• Analysis: Student will be able to apply their knowledge of community-based development in the context of their specific project work.

Intercultural Awareness

• Analysis: Student will be able to differentiate between own and other worldviews and can act and design projects accordingly.

Personal Growth

• Comprehension: Student will be able to explain how their strengths, weaknesses, values, and skills could be utilized within a specific project.
• Application: Student will be able to employ their personal abilities in order to contribute to their specific project group.

Project Management

• Application: Student will be able to be a contributing team member by exhibiting traits of a project manager.

Scenario for Group Discussion

Provide the following scenario to small groups of students for discussion:

You are involved with a co-curricular group that works in a rural Guatemalan community focused on providing clean water to this community’s residents.  Your team is actively researching biosand filters and seeks to constantly improve the models constructed from concrete.  For a more in-depth understanding of how a biosand filter works, please conduct online research.  The main language spoken in this community is Spanish.
You are one of five students on the first implementation trip and are currently working with local construction workers to construct new biosand filters. The project team made one other trip to the community for a site assessment trip nine months prior and has had limited communication since.  Your team is also assessing filters that were previously created for sustainability and proper construction.

Discuss in your team your language abilities.  Do any of you speak Spanish?

Overall, how does your team plan on communicating with community members?  What advantages do the team members who speak Spanish have? How can you still utilize all of your team members?

As filters that have been previously built by local construction workers are examined, it is noted that the cement was produced using too much water.  However, when your team attempts to correct this situation by building new filters that have less water in the cement, a small amount of visible air pockets are seen throughout the final concrete filter.

What mix for cement will your team choose?  What technical knowledge led you to this decision? 

Is there other information still missing? Form a list of questions you still have and ideas for how to answer them. 

After discussion, your team concludes that the mix with less water—though it produces small air pockets in the concrete filter –is better suited for construction the biosand filters than the mix with more water.

Compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two types of filters. Are there other options you could explore?

The community members working on the construction of the filters, however, are not convinced that the filters with air pockets are better.

What are some reasons as to why the construction workers do not fully grasp this concept?

Many community members fear that the filters with air pockets are of worse quality than those constructed with the more wet cement because the new filters have a visible problem and do not look as nice as the older variety.  Your team fears that the construction workers will return to the older, weaker mix once your team departs.

How can you convince the construction workers to continue using the stronger, though not visibly perfect, filters with air pockets?  When discussing this with your group, please consider:

• The technical reasoning
• Your communication strategy
• How you will acquire the trust of and gain credibility with the construction workers
• Cultural differences
• Long-term understanding and continued use of the stronger cement

Facilitator Notes

Divide students into groups of 5 students and give them 30 minutes to discuss the situation within their groups.  Allow students to conduct further research on laptops, etc. as needed.  Direct groups to think from both their own perspective as well as that of a local construction worker.  Next, facilitate a class discussion about what decisions the various groups made concerning the final question and how they came to those conclusions.  Allow for debate between the teams so students have time to realize the consequences and benefits of their team’s final decisions.  Guide the class through this type of analysis.   Finally, discuss with the students how on-site in the actual scenario, one part of the proposed solution consisted of training one construction worker to oversee all filter construction to help ensure consistency.  He received special training and was awarded a certificate identifying him as the construction specialist.  What is the benefit of this?  Was this considered by any of the groups?

Final Discussion Questions

• Why did your group make the decision it did?
• What was the process that your team used to come to a decision?
• Why is culturally relevant communication important?
• What aspects of the local culture would be helpful to know in order to make a more educated decision?
• Why is important to acquire trust?